Harsh Lessons
by India Squirrel
Summary: New York, 1973: Jazz is a Jet and Patia a Shark. Both know the story of Maria and Tony, but they cannot help falling in love. Have the two gangs learnt their lessons from the former tragedy? Sorry if its slusky please R&R!


I haven't done this for a while, so if you could bear with me…hopefully you'll enjoy this!

It was almost morning in New York. In the city that never sleeps, the streets were quiet, the air ruffled only by the slow breath of a million dreamers. Overhead, the sky was laced with silver ribbons, as though the day were hiding behind the thick night clouds – promising sunshine, warmth, the resurgence of colour after the long grey hours of darkness. In the richer avenues, trees quivered in a breath of wind, seeming to shake with anticipation at the coming of dawn.

Anyone who saw Jazz Merrick that morning would have known that something unusual was happening. For one thing, he didn't belong to this picture book neighbourhood, with its trees and neat little houses and postage stamp gardens. This neighbourhood was for the lawyers and doctors, the moneyed classes who relied on the fractured lives of New York City. To the people behind the net curtains, Jazz would have appeared a class A gutter rat: unfortunate refuse from the other Big Apple. For a second thing, no sensible human would have been up this early, especially on the back of a sixteen hour day of shift work. Jazz should have been curled up in his flat, the snores of his siblings around him.

But the main point, the jarring fact that would have hit anyone who knew Jazz, was that he was totally alone. Maybe not such a strange thing: but stranger when it is known that Jazz was a Jet. A man's gang was like his family, his support network. Gang members never went any where alone. But in this early morning, under the first hints of dawn, the only footsteps accompanying Jazz were his own.

He made slow progress down the avenue, wandering from side to side as though he hadn't a care in the world. But this appearance was discredited by the quick glances he kept taking behind him, the way he had tilted his hat to hide his face. When he reached the end of the street he came to a sudden halt. He took another look around, before ducking into the shadow of one of the largest trees. With nervous hands he lit a cigarette, leaning against the iron railings.

Minutes ticked agonisingly away. A quarter of an hour passed: a half an hour. Jazz chain smoked, letting the ash fall over his shoes. His eyes, soft brown but with a biting hint of green, were fixed on the avenue across from him, waiting. From the outside he looked calm. It was a shell: inside, his heart was pounding in his ears and he was praying to a God he had long ignored.

In the sky above, the dawn progressed blithely, following its colours through grey to white to red to blue, without recognition of the lonely figure below.

Jazz looked at his watch and sighed. He stubbed the cigarette, letting it drop onto the floor. Sadly he took his hat off – what did it matter now? – and made to walk off.

'Put your hat back on!' a voice hissed behind him. He spun around, accidentally speaking aloud.

'Pati!'

'Sshhhhhh!' she whispered, terror in her eyes. 'Do you want us to be caught?'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' He took her hand absently, looking into her face. 'I thought you weren't coming.'

'I was held up. Mama was ill. She asked me not to go.'

'Do you think she knows?'

'I think she suspects.' The girl's skin was beaded with tears. She turned irritably away from Jazz to brush them away, trying to clear the red from her eyes.

'Patia?' he said softly. 'Are you sure you want to do this?'

Patia took a deep breath. This was the last chance for them both: the last chance to surrender and accept the lives they were living. It was so tempting, so safe, to choose the known. But at the same time, there was Jazz, standing in front of her, representing a different, brighter future. And she knew that really there was no choice at all.

'Yes,' she said quietly. 'We must.'

As the city woke, stretching in the first full light of the sun, a man and a women walked into one of New York's many stations. He seemed about twenty, dressed in a scruffy suit with cigarette ash on his shoes. She was a tan skinned, black haired girl – a Mexican, perhaps, or a Puerto Rican. It was her money that bought the tickets to Seattle.

'You two are going to have a long trip.' The guard commented unhelpfully as they boarded.

'Yes,' the man agreed. He looked briefly out, back at the skyscrapers and rush of his home. How had they got here, he wondered? Would they be able to make the new life they both dreamed of? Would they ever be able to come home?

'Yes. We sure are.'


End file.
